It was a call for help from activists that took the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis in March 1968. Days later he would be fatally shot by James Earl Ray on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.But before the motel, the shooting, the riots and the mourning, there was the Memphis sanitation workers' strike.King broke away from his work on the Poor People's Campaign to travel from Atlanta to Tennessee and help energize the strikers — his last cause for economic justice.Fifty years later, Elmore Nickelberry is one of the last strike participants still on the job with the Memphis Sanitation Department. He's 86 and his night shift starts at the "barn" — mostly a giant parking lot full of garbage trucks.Today he's a driver with a crew of two, and his truck is equipped to lift and dump trash bins. Back in the '50s and '60s, he did the lifting and dumping."When I first started it was rough," he says. "I had to tote tubs on my head, on my shoulders, under my arms."He rode on the back of truck, jumping off to go into people's back yards to pick up garbage. It was a filthy, and often thankless job.Nickelberry says the trash tubs would leak, dripping onto his clothes. Sometimes he would have to climb into the back of the truck to help load the garbage."And when I'd load the truck there would be maggots in my shoes," says Nickelberry.But the city didn't let African-American workers shower at the barn – that was reserved for the white drivers. And there was no place for them to take shelter in the rain. In early 1968 trash collectors Echol Cole and Robert Walker climbed into the back of a truck to escape a storm, and were accidently crushed to death by its compactor.In response, workers organized to demand better working conditions and higher pay. Nickelberry says they had no respect."Most of the time they'd call us boys," he says. "Or we'd get on the bus and they'd say 'look at that old garbage man.' And I knew I wasn't no garbage man. I just worked in garbage."Then Mayor Henry Loeb rejected the workers' demands, refusing to recognize their union. They walked off the job. Nickelberry says they marched downtown every morning, wearing sandwich boards and carrying placards that declared "I Am A Man."The heart of racismThe strike was supported by local clergy active in the civil rights movement. A key organizer was the Rev. James Morris Lawson Jr., pastor of Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis at the time.He helped map strategy for the sanitation workers strike, and spoke out against the city's leadership."When a public official orders a group of men to 'get back to work and then we'll talk' and treats them as though they are not men, that's a racist point of view," he said in 1968. "For at the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man.""I used some of the movement's language that you were men. You're a child of God. You are somebody," recalls Lawson, now 89 and living in Los Angeles."Segregation tries to pretend that you're not a human being. You're not a man like that. You have to fight that as you have now engaged in this struggle. You yourselves must claim your humanity before God."Lawson had studied Ghandi's non-violent methods as a missionary in India, and had come South at the urging of King."The climate in Memphis was that of a pretty fierce racism," he says.There were no black supervisors at the sanitation department, and wages were so meager many of the workers used food stamps to eat. They called the public works barn "the plantation."The strike was languishing, so to help galvanize support in the broader black community, Lawson invited King to come speak."When I called him, King immediately said 'of course, yes,'" Lawson says.King's last marchThe strike was all but broken until King got involved, according to Fred Davis, a Memphis city councilman at the time."Dr. King's presence gave some buoyancy to the sanitation workers," Davis says. "But on the other hand it stiffened the resistance in the white community."Davis had just taken office in January of 1968 — one of the city's first three African-American councilmen. He was chairman of the public works committee, which oversaw the sanitation department. But he sided with the workers in their fight with the city."That's me and him on his last march," Davis says as he looks at a photograph taken on March 28. In it, a young Davis is standing near King, a crowd following behind. Davis says as the march rounded Beale Street, a group of young men broke away."They started throwing bricks into the windows of the businesses and taking sticks and breaking the windows out," Davis says. "And then all hell broke loose and the police moved in with tear gas and nightsticks."He says he and another black councilman were accosted by police in the melee. "We tried to explain to them we were a member of the city council," Davis says. "And they replied they didn't give a damn."The march was turned back, and organizers took King to safety, fearing he would be targeted. Police killed a 16-year-old suspected of looting. Dozens of people were injured. And more than 250 arrested."It came apart," Davis says. "And Dr. King was very disappointed."By nightfall, the Tennessee legislature enacted a state of emergency, armored tanks rolled into town with some 3,800 National Guard troops, and Mayor Loeb set a curfew."When the march ... degenerated into a riot, abandoned by its leaders, the police with my full sanction, took the necessary action to restore law and order," Loeb said at the time.King joined organizers for a news conference that evening where they said the marches would continue."Since the unfortunate developments today took place," King said, "I'll probably have to stay longer than I originally planned.""The nation is sick"King returned in early April.The only African-American church sanctuary in Memphis large enough to accommodate the crowd that wanted to hear King on April 3, 1968, was Mason Temple, home to the Church of God in Christ."We felt a kindredness, a relationship with him and with the civil rights movement," says Presiding Bishop Charles Blake as he walks across vivid red carpet to the pulpit where King preached for the last time. "We were overjoyed to open our doors for the rally on that night.""Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis," King said during the mass meeting."The nation is sick," he said. "Trouble is in the land."After spending more than a decade trying to dismantle segregation, King had turned his focus to poverty. He was organizing the Poor People's Campaign when the Rev. James Lawson asked him to come to Memphis. Lawson says the sanitation workers' plight was a natural fit with his new mission.But the city of Memphis did not like the attention that King's presence brought. After the violent demonstration on March 28, city officials were seeking a court injunction to prevent King from leading another march on April 5."Certainly, a large part of the white community in Memphis was alarmed and afraid, and on the verge of hysteria about possible civil disorder," says local attorney Charles Newman who was part of the legal team hired by King and the SCLC to fight the injunction.Newman says they had a strong legal argument for the march to proceed."I think the subtext was that the chances of civil disorder were higher if the march were enjoined than if it were allowed," Newman says.King was being attacked for the violence in Memphis, says Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, and the editor of King's papers."He knew that if he didn't respond and show that he could have a peaceful march in Memphis then what were the prospects for his Poor People's Campaign in Washington and particularly in that volatile environment of '67, '68?" Carson says. "You know there were signs that the country was coming apart on racial lines.""I've been to the mountaintop"A spring thunderstorm was dousing Memphis the night of April 3. King was doubtful people would show for the mass meeting at Mason Temple so, at first, he stayed behind at the Lorraine Motel.But the sanctuary was full to the balconies, and the crowd called out to hear from King, according to former councilman Fred Davis."He came in and sat in the chair for a minute just to catch his breath and then he approaches the podium. He had no notes or nothing," Davis says. "He was in the Spirit."We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop," King preached to rousing applause."For me it was one of the zenith experiences of the whole campaign, the whole movement," says Rev. Lawson."It was thundering and lightning outside and we had a tin roof in part of the Mason Temple. And so the rain was just battering the roof. Nevertheless there was a sense inside of warmth and unity. We're engaged in a great struggle."King continued:
The Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike: King's Last Cause For Economic Justice
